Ways of Looking at Buildings

The roof is one of the most basic parts of a building. When we start drawing stick figures and their homes as children, we often include the iconic upside-down-V roof.

Most buildings have either a flat roof or a gable roof - a gable roof is the iconic upside-down-V roof.

It's easy to spot the most familiar building materials - you can usually tell at a glance whether a wall is made of brick or wood or concrete. Often, what you see on the surface is cladding -  an external layer of wood or brick or stone that hides the building's frame.

It's much harder to know what materials were used to create the structure of a building. The building's frame could be wood, brick, steel, or concrete.

Obviously, the purpose of a building is the biggest factor in how it will look - especially how big it is. An apartment building needs to be bigger than a house, and an auditorium is likely to be bigger than a bookstore.

This is the heart of the best-known quote about architecture: "Form follows function."

So ask: what was this building built for?

And since the use of a building can change with time, ask: what is it used for now?

What do you see when you look at a building?

For me, it was usually a vague impression: it's old. It's new. It's beautiful. It's boring. It's got lots of windows. It's plain and looks like a prison.

But as I started looking closer, I started noticing more subtle differences. And I noticed I didn't have the vocabulary to describe that interesting … thing … over the sort of doorway area.

I wanted to learn more about what makes buildings special, and I needed to learn about all those elements so I could recognize them and talk about them.

Here's what I've learned.